Ubuntu

kubuntu wireless issues; wpasupplicant fails

Asked by nareia

I still have Gutsy, and have recently been connected to the internet wirelessly at home. My computer randomly boots me offline immediately after I connect, and then often again once or twice within a few minutes. My first thought was that someone meddled with my computer, and I changed some things hastily as root without quite realizing that I couldn't return it to 'default' any longer if I had edited the actual default. I changed the static host section, and tried to 'configure eth0' in the settings, and since then no matter what I do the lower right connection icon -and- its menu have changed so that all my options are manual, and no networks or devices are seen.

I checked out some pages and documents and whatnot and tried some troubleshooting. the ESSID line 1 looks like this:
eth0 unassociated ESSID:off/any
I got stuck connecting to the router, so i went to install wpasupplicant....
'wpasupplicant is already in its newest version'
then i typed 'sudo wpa_supplicant -iath0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Dmadwifi -w'
then i added -dd
then it tried and failed to read and parse the wpa configuration file and failed to add interface ath0.

I really want my internet connection to work smoothly and not cut out on me, but at the moment it's far worse than it was. Can I make it so that when I quickly right click on the network icon in the lower right it will have a menu of wireless networks and other options again? And so that it won't kick me off all the time any more?

thanks so much. i know i don't know a lot, but i'm trying to learn.
nareia

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Ernest Yang (ernest-atheros) said : 		#1

Type the following commands, and post their outputs:
ifconfig -a
iwconfig
iwlist ath0 scan
Also post your wpa_supplicant fail message.

Revision history for this message
nareia (pinionedpoet) said : 		#2

I've solved this since my desperately confused post. I read as much as I could tried a lot of things as safely as I knew how without much direct advice. It took me forever to find out how i needed to open /etc/network/interfaces without it not being found for some reason or else looking blank (it always looked blank in emacs, and i couldn't figure that out for the life of me), but eventually fixed it on my own by editing a couple specific addresses out in interfaces, rearranging 2 other lines which had gotten switched around, and commenting something out. It was a mess! All seems to be working now, much much better than before. For the first time, NM connects to my own wireless network automatically on startup w/o needing any oversight or questions answered! Sweet.